The Register Editorial: Licensing should be about health and safety

Some see licenses as way to profit from requirements

Apr. 15, 2013

MARK MARTURELLO/REGISTER ILLUSTRATION

Written by

The Register’s Editorial

CATCHING UP
ON OUR COVERAGE

The Register’s editorial board is exploring the financial burdens and economic implications of Iowa’s licensure requirements. • To read the other editorials and columns we have published, visit DesMoinesRegister.com/joblicensing.

• To share your experiences about licenses to work in any profession, contact editorial writer Andie Dominick at adominick@dmreg.com.

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The Des Moines Register’s editorial board has been delving into Iowa’s licensing requirements for a multitude of jobs. A national study last year by the nonprofit Institute for Justice concluded that only six states licensed more low- and moderate-wage jobs than Iowa does, and our state has some of the most burdensome licensing laws among the 50 states, ranking 46th overall.

The study found that many of these job requirements do little to protect the public or ensure that people are properly trained. Instead, businesses have pushed licensing requirements as a way to reduce competition in a certain skill area or to profit from providing required training.

After our editorials on the licensing requirements for cosmetologists (which are more than 10 times longer than for emergency medical technicians), we heard from many cosmetologists and cosmetology school owners. One of the eye-opening letters we received was from Darrell Hanson, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1979 to 1994.

Hanson shed light on howIowa ended up with these burdensome licensing requirements. He was chairman of the Iowa Professional and Occupational Regulatory Commission — with its “unfortunate acronym PORC.” The commission was charged with making recommendations to lawmakers about professional licensure proposals, including continuing education requirements.

“We heard requests to create new licensure requirements for a variety of professions, and in all cases the push for stricter professional regulation was spearheaded by members of that profession, never by members of the general public,” Hanson said. While the motive was sometimes a matter of public health, it was frequently about limiting the number of people entering a profession to reduce competition and earning money by providing additional, required training.

Hanson recounted a conversation with a constituent in the 1980s. Hair perms were coming back in style. He received a call from a cosmetologist who wanted him to introduce legislation prohibiting the purchase of home permanent kits by anyone who didn’t have a cosmetology license.

“She was refreshingly honest and didn’t even try to couch her arguments in terms of public protection,” Hanson said. “I asked her if she thought do-it-yourself permanents posed a health or safety risk, and she said no. I then asked her if the problem was that home perms were too difficult for untrained people to perform, and she no. In fact, she said, the problem was they were too easy. Anyone who could read the box could do it.

“So many people were buying home permanent kits, her business was suffering. The solution seemed simple to her: Outlaw home permanents so that her old customers had to come back to her.”

A similar complaint was voiced by a cosmetologist who contacted the Register’s editorial board last week. She complained about Iowans doing their own highlights, color and permanent waves at home. She suggested not only should these products not be sold to the public because they were hurting cosmetologists’ business, but morning TV shows should not be allowed to give people tips on how to do their own hair color to save money.

Priceless, said Hanson, referring to the woman’s comments. “I guess the income of licensed cosmetologists even trumps the First Amendment.”

Of course, occupational and professional licensure requirements are supposed to be about public health and public safety. Hanson’s conversation with his constituent shows some cosmetologists think the licensing law is intended to limit the number of workers in the profession. “She became frustrated with my lack of sympathy and closed the conversation with a comment that I’ve never forgotten: ‘Our licensing law has been a total failure, because we’ve had cosmetology licensing all these years and there’s more cosmetologists now than there ever were!’ ” Hanson said.

If you want to be a cosmetologist in New York, the state requires 1,000 hours of training. Iowa requires 2,100 hours. This is only one of this state’s burdensome licensing requirements that are out of sync with the majority of the 50 states, that discourage business creation and that make it difficult for Iowans to land jobs. Cosmetology requirements have also cemented in place an education infrastructure that hurts students and helps dozens of for-profit cosmetology schools.

Attending “beauty school” in Iowa can cost as much as $30,000, according to a federal government calculator. Students spend months cutting hair, waxing eyebrows and providing other services. In addition to the tuition students pay, the schools keep the money paid by customers during the students’ hands-on training, while the students receive no compensation for that work. The state granted licenses to more than 1,000 cosmetologists last year, yet there typically are only 220 annual job openings for cosmetologists in Iowa, federal labor statistics show. While students rack up loan debt, the median wage for Iowa cosmetologists is less than $11 per hour.

The Des Moines Register editorial board has urged state lawmakers to reduce the required hours to obtain a cosmetology license and to end taxpayer-financed tuition grants to attend the schools.

Several cosmetologists were upset at these recommendations. They were required to obtain 2,100 hours of training and say everyone else should be too. One pointed out it was her training that helped her spot a cancerous lump on a client’s head. “Had I not known what I was looking at, she would have ended up with a brain tumor and likely died long before she did,” the cosmetologist wrote in an email. The head of the association representing cosmetology schools penned an essay defending the for-profit institutions and the state requirements, saying Iowa cosmetology graduates are sought out for jobs in other states because of the high level of training.

Then there were the Iowans who contacted the editorial board with more troubling information about the cosmetology business and cosmetology schools. Their observations should prompt lawmakers and regulators to make changes. Here are a few of their stories:

• Bev Letze said her daughter Jennifer enrolled in LaJames International College in 2010. She was killed in a car accident the month before classes began. Letze asked the school to refund the enrollment fee, but the school didn’t respond or refund the money. And LaJames officials have not answered our queries either.

• Ashlee Jones, who graduated from cosmetology school in 2012 and has two children, is left with $75 a month to live on after paying her student loans. “It causes me to work a part-time bartending job to make ends meet,” she said.

• Jack Morlan owns a salon and was chairman of the Iowa Board of Cosmetology for nine years. He shared the complaints students made against both cosmetology and barber schools. When students neared graduation, schools would inform them they didn’t have enough training hours completed and would need to remain longer — and pay anywhere from $8 to $12 per hour to complete them. Students are not told they will need to sell products like shampoo to graduate, Morlan said. “They don’t have it in writing; they get them enrolled and then they tell them,” he said.